Florida-Georgia: Sumrall Knows the Math. He’s Just Not Telling Georgia Who Takes the Snap.
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Photo by jasonduhon, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Original photograph, unaltered.
You can’t buy what Georgia has. You have to grow it.
Georgia week usually brings out the worst in a football coach. He puffs his chest, praises the opponent’s long snapper and swears it’s just another game, which is like saying Halloween is just another Saturday. This one happens to fall on Halloween, which seems about right.
Jon Sumrall skipped the theater Monday. He walked into the room and handed over something Gator fans may not want to hear: a scouting report on why the Bulldogs are who they are, and why Florida isn’t. Not yet, anyway.
“I think it’s year 11 for Kirby there,” Sumrall said. “You can tell they have layered development.”
Layered. Like a wedding cake, or a lasagna, or the debt Florida has piled up in this series. Georgia recruited great players “year-in, year-out.” They developed them. They’re “calloused,” “strong” and “physical,” and all of it, Sumrall said, has “been built over time.”
Translation: You can’t buy what Georgia has. You have to grow it, and Georgia has been out there fertilizing since the Obama administration.
Georgia, Georgia, Georgia
“Georgia, Georgia, Georgia, Georgia,” Sumrall said.
No, this was not Sumrall trying to invoke that Ray Charles classic as a singer. It was just a dose of pure reality.
He did his bye-week homework on Georgia’s personnel report, the sheet that lists each player’s previous school. Down the Bulldogs’ list, over and over, the previous school was the same school. Kirby isn’t running a football program so much as a family farm.
“When we can become that,” Sumrall said, “is when you… create consistency.”
Now flip to Florida’s sheet. Roughly half the Gators were here last year. The other half just showed up from a high school or somewhere else, a few of them probably still asking where the cafeteria is.
“They’re in Year 11,” Sumrall said. “We’re in Year One.”
That’s not an excuse. It’s arithmetic.
Every Gator fan who has watched Georgia treat this game like a standing dinner reservation needs to learn the math.
Never Again 3
Sumrall didn’t sugarcoat his first winter. Florida hit the transfer portal “just to be able to field a football team that could practice.”
Not to win a championship. To practice. That’s like shopping for a car so you’ll have something to park in the driveway.
December and January were a minefield. Players he thought were staying left, and players he figured were gone stayed.
“You didn’t know where you were going to step and what was going to blow up on you,” he said.
Welcome to modern college football, where the roster has a revolving door and every agent has a cell phone.
His plan from here sounds almost quaint: Recruit high school kids. Develop them. Keep them. Use the portal for six to 10 difference-makers a year to plug real holes, not to restock the whole pantry.
“It better never again be high 20s, 30s,” he said, “or we got a real problem.”
He also noted that Georgia doesn’t shop the portal for backups.
When the Dawgs have a need, they go get a great player like Isiah Canion.
“They don’t go out and just go to the portal to get a third-string guy,” Sumrall said.
Some programs shop at Neiman Marcus. Others hit the clearance rack hoping for a 46 long.
Then came the line of the day, on Georgia linebacker Chris Cole, whom Kirby has been raving about: “If I had Chris Cole on my roster, I’d be raving about retaining him too.”
The One-Year Flip
Nobody in Gainesville gets misty-eyed over “process.” Gator fans want to hear about process the way they want to hear about root canals. Sumrall knows it, so he tried to have it both ways.
“They didn’t just do a one-year flip,” he said of Georgia. “They’ve done a build from the ground up. And I want a one-year flip, too. I want to win every day.”
Don’t we all, coach. Don’t we all.
He admitted his short-term plan has been hit-and-miss: “some of it’s gone well, some of it hasn’t.” The record agrees.
An upset of then-No. 4 Ole Miss. Back-to-back losses to Missouri and South Carolina. Then a 27-24 win at Texas that lifted the Gators to No. 17.
One week they look like world-beaters, the next week they’re beating themselves. That’s a year-one team.
The Quarterback Shell Game
Then came the question everybody really came for: Aaron Philo or Tramell Jones Jr.?
Sumrall answered it the way a politician answers a question about taxes.
“Both guys are available. Believe in both guys,” he said. “Not going to name a starter today… We need both those guys to be ready to play.”
He’ll decide “middleish of the week,” probably Wednesday. And don’t wait by the fax machine.
“There’s not going to be a big QB1 announcement for this game or any game,” he said.
Why all the secrecy? Start with health. Philo, the Georgia Tech transfer who started the first six games, is coming back from the shoulder injury that sidelined him at Texas. Jones, who won his first career start in Austin, came out of it with “wear-and-tear” injuries. Both practiced Monday, and Sumrall says how they hold up “matters.”
But let’s not be naive. Making Georgia prepare for two quarterbacks costs Florida nothing but a little sleep.
Philo is the polished passer: 70.5 percent completions, nine touchdowns, three picks. Jones is the sophomore who hit a fourth-and-12 throw and ran for the game-sealing first down at Texas.
Kirby is already treating it as a two-man problem.
“One beat Ole Miss handedly and one beat Texas on the road,” Smart said, adding that Buster Faulkner “can play to the strengths of each guy.”
That’s exactly what Sumrall wants. Let Georgia’s defensive staff stay up late watching two guys.
And there’s a little extra seasoning: Philo, the former Prince Avenue Christian star, holds Georgia’s high school passing record. Imagine the home-state kid beating the Dawgs in their own capital city.
TV TV TV TV TV
Watch: Sumrall on Florida’s quarterback decision — Monday’s press conference, via Gator Bait Media.
Get Your Filthy Hands Off It
And now a word from our sponsor. Or rather, a word against them.
This year’s game has an official name, Gawd help us: the Invesco QQQ Atlanta Gridiron Classic.
That’s how it reads on the stadium’s event page and the ticket listings. It sounds like an index fund that sponsors a charity 10K.
Somewhere a marketing VP got a bonus for that, and somewhere Bill Kastelz, the Times-Union sports editor who coined the Cocktail Party name, is spinning like a rotisserie chicken.
We know what this game is. It’s Florida-Georgia. Or Georgia-Florida, depending on the year and your bloodline. It was the World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party until the college presidents got squeamish, and every fan with a cooler kept calling it that anyway. It has belonged to Jacksonville nearly every year since 1933, and it’ll go back there in 2028.
Corporate America’s attempt to gussy it up may muddy the fender a little. It won’t wreck the car. Florida-Georgia is stronger than all this corporate filth that passes for branding, or rebranding.
So please, please, please. Get your filthy hands off of it.
The Verdict
Sumrall doesn’t sound like a coach making excuses. He sounds like one who has studied the opponent closely and is honest about how far Florida has to go. In this business, honesty is rarer than a Georgia fan who doesn’t bring up the scoreboard.
Georgia is coming off a home loss to Auburn, which should make the Dawgs about as cheerful as a wet cat.
The tickets are split down the middle on paper, but in Atlanta the crowd may turn out more like 60-40, Bulldogs. Call it a semi-home game with a neutral-site invoice.
The Bulldogs are still the Bulldogs, built layer by layer over a decade. Sumrall has one year of layers.
On Saturday, we find out if that’s enough, or if Florida’s going to get the Ray Charles treatment again: Georgia on its mind, all the way home.
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